


In which the trolls run a circus gig

by fukmylyf



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cool, F/F, F/M, Gen, John is aromantic and asexual, M/M, also jadekat might just be my christmas ship, but u kno, expect lots of fluff sadstuck and MAGYYKS, hey you can do blank tags, how to tag, not really - Freeform, ok, thats basically it, the trolls run a circus gig, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 16:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2738633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fukmylyf/pseuds/fukmylyf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>what it says on the can</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Be Jade Harley

You love Christmas time. Whenever you fly over from your island to join Rose, John and Dave for the holidays, each year in New York, you feel, for once, that you’re not lonely. All the people would make some feel claustrophobic, but you just feel… _alive._

Of course, you especially love it when the Christmas fair opens.

“Oh! Jade, oh my god, look!” John grabs your arm and drags you over to look at something one of the stores is selling. You split with Rose and Dave a while ago so you could get each other Christmas presents. Tomorrow, you’re going with Dave and the day after, with Rose. Then you guys’ll just spend the rest of the time until Christmas goofing off and being silly and having lot’s of fun! You wish you could spend forever with them and never, ever leave. It’s not like you _have_ to go back to the island, but you owe it to your grandpa, and besides, you don’t wanna bother your friends by having to _live_ with them. 

John gestures at a bunch of things built out of bolts and screw. 

“Oooo, sweet!” you yelp. John gestures at a crow made of bolts sitting in the corner. Oh my gosh, Dave would lo-

“I call dibs!” he says, grinning.

“No fair,” you reply, pouting. John sticks his tongue out at you and talks to the vendor about price for a bit. You glance over the other things, but none of them are as cool as the one John is getting for Dave. Poop. You’ll find something else, then. 

“John! Look, that guy is selling handmade clocks,” you screech, grabbing his arm. He shoves his bird in his backpack and turns to follow, waving goodbye at the vendor.

You stare at the clocks. One of them has the gears on the outside and is painted in various shades of red, but there’s one that’s bright pink and covered in ponies and you _know_ Dave will love/hate it, but the one with gears is really cool too and…

“Hey, Jade, I’m going to get another fruit punch. You want anything?” John asks, shaking you from your reverie. 

“Nope! I’m just going to look around a bit more, I’ll see you by the pretzel stand!”

John nods and vanishes in the crowd. You buy the pink clock in the end, because it’s funnier and cuter than the red one. 

You start to browse for something for Rose. You passed a shop selling fancy knitting needles a while back but you think, for now, whatever. You pull your jacket around yourself a little tighter, still struggling with the snowy weather, and start to push out of the crowd. 

 


	2. Be Karkat Vantas

You’re walking fast with your head down, three bags of food in your hands and a cup of coffee hanging off your lips. You can see the building, you just need to walk a little faster. Some of the coffee sloshes out of the cup and you can hear it hiss when it hits the cold, frozen ground. You curse internally; coffee is fucking expensive, damn it.

You walk faster, tilting your head up to prevent further spillage. 

“Hey, do you need help?” someone asks. You stop and turn around and this Indian girl in a bright green jacket and a blue skirt runs up to you. She’s got electric green eyes behind large round glasses and the stupidest and cutest buckteeth you’ve ever seen on anybody ever.

“Mph,” you reply, any answer you might’ve had cut short by the fact that you have a steaming cup of hot coffee in your mouth. She giggles. 

“You look kinda weighed down by everything you’re carrying,” she explains. You nod slightly, taking care not to spill. She rushes forward and takes a bag, freeing one of your hands. You take your soggy paper coffee cup out of mouth.

“Uh, thanks,” you say. 

“You're welcome! Where are you headed?” she asks. You nod your head in the general direction of where you were headed.

“Over there.”

“Cool! My name’s Jade, by the way!” She beams at you, skipping alongside you as the two of you make your way side by side to the building. 

“Karkat,” you reply, taking a sip of your coffee. 

“You don’t seem to be a very conversational type,” she says, pouting. You roll your eyes.

“Oh, I apologize for being a bitch, stranger I barely know,” you say, throwing up the arm holding the bags of McDonalds. 

“You really are bitch,” she says thoughtfully. “Almost makes me feel bad for helping _you_.”

“Wow, ouch, I’m so hurt,” you throw back. She grins.

“Aw, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were a sensitive jerk,” she quips. You snort and the two of you fall into a friendly banter, trading insults in the few minutes it takes to get to your building. You finish your coffee and throw the cup into a nearby bin.

“So, abrupt change of subject, but I’m guessing you aren’t from around here?” you say, taking the bags back from her.

“No, I’m not,” she replies simply. You love people like that. “I grew up on a privately owned island.”

“Fuck, you’re one of those rich people, aren’t you.”

“You say that like it took no work to get there. My grandpa was a major figure in moving forward in biology, and even though he left me a bit of money, I had to keep working to carry on living there!”

“Please don’t tell me I’m talking to a child prodigy.”

“Hehe, kinda. I majored in nuclear physics when I was ten, if that means I’m a prodigy.”

You face palm. “Ok, wow, shut up, way to make me feel incompetent.”

She sticks her tongue out. “Fuck you,” she replies.

You roll your eyes. You should show her your own tricks. She’d probably be mildly impressed, but if she’s a physicist she probably knows all your tricks… 

“Wait here, I’m going to drop these off.” You turn around without waiting for an answer, darting inside. You throw the food on the table. 

“Foods here, fuckers, eat and don’t starve,” you yell into the dim room. A few affirmative yells echo back from various doors leading off from the main room/foyer thing.

You walk quickly back outside. Jade’s still standing there.

“Hi,” you say. 

“Where'd you vanish?”

“Had to make sure my friends didn’t starve themselves,” you reply. She snorts.

“Right, I wanna show you something,” you say quickly. She raises her eyebrows. You pull a pack of cards out of your back pocket, open it, pull the cards out and shuffle them. She watches your fingers carefully.

“What are you doing.”

“Card tricks.”

You expertly flick the cards, letting them fly up in a neat arc only to land in a tidy pile on your other hand. Jade’s eyes widen. You shuffle a couple more times, pull off a bridge in midair and put the cards back into a pile. You fan them out.

“Pick one,” you say.

“Can I just say, you said card tricks and I was thinking cheap easy ones, not professional ones.”

You snort. “Yeah, I get that a lot. Pick one.”

She smiles at you and wow, she has a pretty smile, all buckteeth and adorableness. She’s got a little dimple in the corner of her lips. Oh fuck, you’re falling fast and you only just _met_ her. She picks a card, turns it over.

“Have you memorized it?” you ask. She nods.

“Great,” you reply. You shuffle the fan back into a deck. “Now split this wherever and put your card in.”

She takes the deck, splits it about three quarters of the way down and slides her card in.

“Jade!” you hear someone call. She waves at someone over your shoulder. 

“Oh my gosh, you could show my friend! He’s trying to be a magician but he only knows really easy party tricks, _JOHN GET OVER HERE!”_ Wow, and you thought you were really loud. Her friend jogs up behind you. He’s a tall lanky Chinese kid with blue eyes and dark blue hair, and he’s wearing dark blue square rimmed glasses and you’re going to guess his favorite color is blue, if his blue jacket, beanie and scarf are anything to go by. 

“Hi!” Great, he’s just as happy-go-lucky as Jade. “I'm John Egbert!”

“Karkat Vantas,” you reply.

“Woah, so your first name means Cancer and your last name is a cure for prostate cancer,” Jade says. You turn around and raise an eyebrow at her. 

“Vantas is a drug for prostate cancer?” you ask. Fuck, no wonder Sollux laughed when you told him. Asshole.

“Yep!”

“And Karkat doesn’t directly translate to cancer, at least as far as I know. In Bahasa, it’s one letter off. Karkata.”

“Well, in Hindi, it’s completely correct!”

“Huh.”

You give Jade a look. “You speak Hindi?”

“No. I speak Malayalam and Tamil. You speak Bahasa?”

John stares between the two of you. “I speak Cantonese. Does that count for anything?”

You and Jade ignore him. “Indonesian on my mother’s side.”

“You don’t _look_ Indonesian,” she states. You run a hand through your shock of red hair. 

“My dad’s family is originally from Ireland.” 

“Huh.”

John waves a hand between the two of you. “Are you done comparing nationalities?”

“No,” you reply. “What’s your history?”

“My dad is American, my mom was Cantonese, ok, are we done now?” 

“Yeah, fine,” you mumble, shuffling the cards in your hand. 

“Oh, yeah, can you still find my card?” Jade asks, giggling. 

“Yep,” you tell her. John sips at his hot fruit punch. 

Jade watches your fingers as you shuffle a couple more times. 

“You know, the great thing about card decks is that every single time you shuffle, there’s a high chance the cards’ll be in a never before seen order,” you say conversationally. Jade quirks a grin. 

“I'm not going to stop staring at your fingers,” she says. 

“That's what she said,” you reply. Jade’s eyes flick up to glare at you before flicking down again. You shuffle the cards back into a deck again and fan it out. 

One card is facing upwards.

“Queen of Hearts?”

Jade gapes. “How did- What-“

“The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, all on a summers day. The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts and took them all away,” you say simply. She punches you in the arm playfully.

“You're such a nerd.”

You bow dramatically. “Thank you, fair maiden.”

She giggles at that and her friend gives you a weird look. He pokes your arm. 

“Are you hitting on her?” he asks, not even bothering to lower his voice. Your cheeks flush darker, and it’s not because the temp suddenly dropped even more.

“Uh,” you reply, master of eloquence you are.

“And so what if he is?” Jade says, taking your arm and pulling you up next to her. John makes a slightly grossed out face. 

“You just _met_ him,” he says, shrugging. “It's weird.”

“Fuck you,” you tell him, intelligently.

“Hell yeah, fuck you,” Jade echoes. “John, I can take care of myself! Besides, Karkat’s not going to scam me, are you?”

“Nope, no scamming here. I am but a lowly illusionist hoping to get with a sexy genius.”

Jade giggles at that. You crack a smile for her, something that isn’t actually that difficult for you to do in spite of your friends stating otherwise. 

John scowls. “You wouldn’t be flirting if Dave was here,” he mumbles, looking to the side. 

“That is because Dave is an asshole and he always chases any guys, that aren’t him or you, away.”

“Yeah, because we don’t want you hooking up with someone we can’t-“

“You can’t trust, yeah, whatever, forget it.” Jade kisses you on the cheek. 

“Uh,” you and John say. Jade ignores him when she turns around to press her forehead to yours. Oh _shit,_ she’s even more pretty close up.

“Do you have anywhere to be or do you wanna go get something to drink?” she asks. You can smell her breath from here, can feel her breath against your lips. Oh fuck, _oh fuck_ , abort, abort, Karkat’s brain has shut down!

“Um,” you say. She quirks an eyebrow. “W-well it depends! What time is it?”

Jade pulls away. “9 o’clock.”

_“Shit!”_ you yell. “I have to go, um, ‘cause I have this show and it starts at 10, and actually you should come watch,” you stutter out. You snatch four tickets from your back pocket, shove your pack of cards in your pocket, and pass her the tickets.

“It's right here in the building, people start queuing at about 9:50, if you wanna see I mean, yeah.” You trail off. Jade smiles at you. 

“See you then,” she says. You smile awkwardly at her. “Don't you have to go?” 

“Fuck, yeah, bye,” you yelp, turning and darting into the building. You turn around at the door and wave at her. She smiles and waves back. Fuck, you are pathetic. 


	3. Jade: Get a Crush on a Stranger

You turn back to John, grinning. 

“ _Jade_. Are you _insane?_ ” he asks, shaking his head in disbelief. Ugh, stupid dumb face. 

“I can take care of myself! I have an extensive knowledge of firearms,” you say. John throws his arms up.

“He could be a con artist trying to kidnap you for all we know! How can we even be sure his name is _Karkat?_ ”

You roll your eyes. “You're being paranoid. He’s a nice guy and I _like_ him!”

Dave trots up to the two of you, Rose following slowly behind.

“Sup. What’s got Egbert’s manly panties all tied up?” Dave asks, smirking at John’s expression. You pout.

“John was upset I was flirting with someone cuter than him,” you reply, crossing your arms and sticking your tongue out at him.

“ _That is not the poi-“_ John starts squeaking but Dave interjects with a “Wait a second, cuter than John? This I gotta see.”

You smile. “Yep! Cuter _and_ less of a douchebag! He’s some kind of magician, apparently, and he has a show tonight and he gave me tickets!”

“Magician? Jade, how old is this new friend of yours?” Rose asks, giving you a strange look. 

“Oh my _god_ , he’s our age!” you nearly yell, exasperated. Rose raises her eyebrows critically. You roll your eyes. 

“Describe your friend. Does he look like he might be gay?” Dave asks, grinning. What a dork.

“I think he’s pan, actually. But he’s mine, hands off,” you say, glaring at Dave. He holds his hands up, palms facing you. 

“So? What’s he look like?” Dave repeats. 

“He's got curly red hair and pale skin and little freckles and these big brown eyes that look almost red or something. He’s also, like, my height. Slightly shorter, it’s _sooooooooo cute_ , and he has a little button nose and everything,” you say, sighing. “Also he-“

Rose cuts you off. Dave looks a little sad. You can empathize.

“Is his name Karkat, by any chance?”

“Yep! Do you know him?”

Rose taps her finger against her chin thoughtfully. “I'm surprised to hear you’re getting along with him. He used to go to the school I go to, but he dropped out rather unexpectedly. Family problems or something, I heard. Anyways, he was always rather ornery and loud. Very grumpy. A few times he even looked rather… depressed, for lack of a better word. Quite the contrast to your happy-go-lucky spirit, Jade.”

You shrug. “He was really nice and friendly to me. I mean, it wasn’t like he was smiling the whole time or anything, but he was really friendly!”

“Rose, was he hot when he was in your school?” Dave asks. 

John makes a face. “I thought you didn’t have a thing for red-heads,” he mumbles, gnawing at his lip.

“Yo, Egbert, just cuz you ain’t interested in romance doesn’t mean you gotta stop us all from engaging in it,” Dave says, shrugging. “‘Sides, I can’t deny that Harley’s got good taste in guys.”

“Is that why you’re always chasing them away from me?” you ask, exasperation creeping into your voice.

“You caught me Harley, that was totally it. But some of them, it was because they wouldn’t take their eyes off your boobs or ass and I could tell they were objectifying you. Can’t let dickfaces like that hit on you.”

You fan yourself and bat your eyelashes at Dave. “Oh, Dave, you’re my knight in shining armor,” you say, making your voice even higher in pitch than normal. Dave smirks and you fake swoon into his arms. He hugs you nice and short before getting you to stand up by yourself again.

“So, your boyfriend has a show tonight?” he asks. 

“Yes, you did mention a show. When is it? Where?”

“It's right here,” you say, jabbing a thumb at the building behind you. “At ten.”

“Do we have to wait here?” John whines. 

“Shut up,” you and Dave say in perfect chorus. Rose smirks. 

“I think we should go wait elsewhere, though. Do you perhaps want to find somewhere warm? There’s a small coffee shop around here somewhere, we should go get something hot to drink and eat, perhaps rest our feet for a while,” Rose says. 

The three of you shrug in agreement. You have about half an hour to kill before Karkat’s show starts, so you have time.


	4. Karkat: Meet "friends"

“Karcat! Where were you? Oh my gosh, we were so _worried!_ ”

“Nepeta, for fucks sake, I was gone for like, ten minutes tops, holy shit,” you reply, trying to push your way past your two-years-younger-and-three-times-stronger little sister. She pouts and crosses her arms, standing firmly in front of you.

“Yeah, but you can’t just keep disapurring like that,” she teases, punching you in the arm in a way she thinks is lightly but actually hurts like hell. 

“Watch it, one day I’m going to really disappear and even _you_ won’t be able to find me.” She smirks and moves aside so you can pass into your makeshift dining room.

Sollux and Eridan are eating, bickering about one thing or another. There’s still one bag on the table, so you dig through it and pull your own food out. You purposely ruffle the bag more so they realize you’re standing right there, present to watch any gross hate make-outs their stupid arguments always seem to devolve into.

“Thup KK,” Sollux says, glancing away from Eridan for a minute to glare down at his McNuggets. 

“Hey ‘Tholluckth,’”, you reply, unwrapping your burger. You ignore Eridan. He’s an asshole, and even if he is your employer, you don’t _have_ to be nice to him, because you’re the best illusionist he can find _and_ employ in this shithole. 

“Kar, you been workin’ on anythin’ new?” Eridan asks. You take a bite out of your burger and chew slowly. You make sure to open your mouth a few times with gross noises to accompany the already gross movements. Eridan pales. Heh, so fun to mess with. Sollux grins and nods. You take a slurp of coke and swallow.

“‘Cept for flirting, no,” you reply. 

“Flirting? With who? Have you finally got a girlfriend?” Sollux snorts, grinning.

“Potentially, asshat,” you answer. Sollux raises his eyebrows.

“Who?”

“Her name’s Jade,” you start. You bite your bottom lip a bit, pressing down curiously against a large-ish sore on the inside of your lower lip. 

“Jade?”

“Jade Harley. She’s a nuclear physicist or something.”

Eridan starts. “Never took you for the type ta go afta older ladies,” he says. 

“She’s my age, dickhead.”

“What'th thee look like?” Sollux asks. It takes you a moment to understand. ‘Thee.’ _She._ Ok.

“She's Indian. Like, Asian Indian. But I think she’s half European or something because she has these really bright green eyes.”

“Hot?” Eridan asks, leaning closer. You nod, taking another bite out of your burger. Eridan and Sollux exchange a glance and grin. They leave you alone to finish eating. That isn’t ominous at all. You grab your soda and leave. Kanaya is probably waiting in her room with some scraps of fabric to dress you up in whatever fresh hell she’s designed for you this time.

“Karkat, you’re late,” she says, frowning. 

“Sorry, had to eat.”

“Really? Nepeta told me she saw you with a girl. Explain?”

“Oh my god, will everyone just leave me alone about that? I met this girl, Jade, who’s really nice and really attractive. We flirted a bit. That’s _it_.”

Kanaya shrugs. “No need to get exasperated,” she tells you, a hint of condescension creeping into her voice. She turns away from you to sort through her wardrobe. You shift from foot to foot; hopefully she isn’t going to try putting you in something too exposing this time. 

She pulls out an outfit that is… relatively normal, oh thank god. Jacket, slacks, shirt. Fuck yes. 

Maybe you’ll survive tonights show. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter'll be longer, promise

**Author's Note:**

> MERRY CHRISTMAS


End file.
